Quote - Nietzsche on Christian Faith

From Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (translated by Helen Zimmern):

The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit.... Modern men, with their obtuseness as regards all Christian nomenclature, have no longer the sense for the terribly superlative conception which was implied to an antique taste by the paradox of the formula, "God on the Cross." Hitherto there had never and nowhere been such boldness in inversion, nor anything at once so dreadful, questioning, and questionable as this formula: it promised the transvaluation of all ancient values. (pg. 34 Dover Thrift Edition)

Telling Kids About Santa?

Over at Emergent Village, Jenell Williams Paris reflects on what to tell her kids about Santa, a subject that has also become an issue around our house this year (my daughter is two and a half):

Should we really encourage children to project their material aspirations onto an idealized white man? As a full-time working woman, I don’t want my own hard work, income generation, present-purchasing and gift-wrapping to not only be entirely discredited, but all attributed to a benevolent white man. And I also don’t want to encourage my children to associate material wealth, kindness and generosity, and feasting with whiteness and maleness....

If Santa were a refugee, or a woman of color, or a plant or animal, I could probably get on board. But theologically speaking, Santa is in direct competition with Jesus, and it seems that Jesus pales in comparison. They’re both bearded white men (in the American imagination), but Santa gives more hugs and lets you sit on his lap. They’re both invisible characters that appear from time to time, so how do you convince a child that though you once told them both were real, only Jesus is really real? They both listen to petitions, but Santa grants wishes in material, fun, lit-up ways. Jesus occasionally answers, but with much less reliability than Santa. Your odds are much better if you pray to Santa for a Wii than if you pray to Jesus for your fighting parents to not divorce.

I'm not sure what to make of Paris' concerns about racism and sexism. If Santa is allowed to become the focus of Christmas, I suppose this could be a problem, but as long as Santa is just a character in certain stories, one among many others, I don't see the big deal. In any case, my daughter is not really old enough to ask a question like "is Santa real?" To her, Santa is a character on TV, only as real to her as Dora the Explorer and Little Bear, and I've tried to keep it that way.

But this is one area where my wife and I don't quite agree--her family always got gifts "from Santa," whereas mine never did, so she is much more comfortable asking things like "what do you want Santa to bring you for Christmas?" I just don't see the value in transferring Santa from being a character in her books and on TV into an imaginary person in the real world. But what I really do not understand is why parents would continue to insist on Santa's existence even after their kids start to question it. Shouldn't they be glad their kids are thinking critically for themselves? Why lie? It isn't as though they are protecting them from some dark secret. I just don't get it.

"Christian Atheism" and the Christian Carnival

This week’s Christian Carnival is up at Parables of a Prodigal World, including my review of The Shack and the usual assortment of interesting posts.

Readers might also be interested in this outstanding article on “Christian Atheism” at The Other Journal (HT James KA Smith, at The Church and Postmodern Culture):

Why Every Christian Should ‘Quite Rightly Pass for an Atheist’, by Jon Stanley:

Perhaps we will tolerate some level of ambiguity when it comes to politics. After all, it may be perfectly legitimate to be authentically “torn” between being either a Republican or a Democrat (and the Independent vote is becoming an increasingly viable position). But this level of ambivalence is rarely tolerated when it comes to religion. Being torn between being an atheist or a theist, or confessing one’s uncomfortability with the categories themselves, is usually interpreted as either weak-willed, weak-minded, or both....

[Yet post-modern philosopher Jacques] Derrida has continually drawn attention to the “porous boundaries” between atheism and theism. He speaks of a certain type of "theism" that “at times so resembles a profession of atheism as to be mistaken for it,” as well as a certain form of “atheism” that has “always testified to the most intense desire for God.”... While this may at first sound like an affront to believing ears, Derrida... is actually echoing a very biblical notion. In biblical terms, authentic faith is not characterized by the denial of one’s doubt and unbelief, but by acknowledging it (dare I say, embracing it), and praying along with the father of the boy who had just been healed by Jesus, “I believe, I don’t believe, help my unbelief.”...

For [Soren] Kierkegaard, the virtues that characterize the life of the one who recognizes they are always “becoming Christian” are “humility” and “rigor” (the humility of admitting that we have not fully arrived at Christ-likeness, and the rigor of the whole-hearted pursuit of becoming like Christ). Contrast these virtues with the vices of “pride” and “sloth” that characterize the life of the one who confesses to having arrived at “being a Christian.”

Read the whole thing, then read Ben Suriano's response:

On What Could Quite Rightly Pass for a Fetish: Some Thoughts on Whether “Every Christian Should ‘Quite Rightly Pass for an Atheist’”

Reclaiming something of the subversive core of Christianity in order to more radically challenge and transform our dominant social ideologies is of utmost importance for Christians today. Indeed, Stanley has done us a great favor in passionately articulating this urgent need, and I therefore stand with him in pursuing these concerns.

Yet I believe that such concerns could be more fruitfully pursued without an appeal to atheism or Derrida. I believe that, at times, Stanley obscures some of his best insights about the radicality of Christianity by placing too much emphasis on how it “quite rightly passes for atheism” and not enough emphasis on how it more significantly does “not quite” pass.

What Does It Mean to Trust the Bible?

I’m often asked how I can trust the Bible when it (particularly the “Old Testament”) includes so many harsh laws and horrific stories, many of which claim divine sanction. Am I not inconsistent to speak of a God of love and goodness when my own scripture includes such atrocities? In fact, too many Christians do seem to be inconsistent on this point, claiming that morality is “absolute” in our own context, but then becoming curiously relativistic when it comes to our own scriptures. They will happily accuse moral relativists of trivializing the holocaust, while simultaneously trivializing the genocides in the Bible itself (such as that described in Numbers 31, to name just one abhorrent example). Even the most horrific biblical commands are sometimes claimed to have been right and moral “back then,” by people who otherwise claim to reject moral relativism.

The problem, as I see it, is that texts like these are generally glossed over or ignored by those who seem to wish the Bible were a monolithic work of systematic theology. Ironically, the common insistence that the Bible is “literally true” on every point leads to some quite outlandish and improbably non-literal interpretations (like the claim that the conquest of Canaan is just a “metaphor” for spiritual warfare). It is little surprise then that many critics reject such obfuscations as ridiculous, and I must agree with them that such unquestioning trust in the Bible is misguided.

But the curious thing is that this view of the Bible is not actually biblical. Yes, there are passages which speak of the truth and inspiration of God’s word (and I agree with them—the Bible truly is inspired), but they certainly don’t require that Christians treat it as a collection of unquestionable propositions, as too many do. For instance, only one verse in the Bible makes any claims about the nature of “all scripture,” and it falls far short of claiming inerrancy: 2 Timothy 3:16 reads, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Whatever “breathed out by God” means (the Greek word is theopneustos, translated “inspired” in other versions, and occurs no where else in the Bible, but in the early church it was also used to describe both scripture and non-scriptural orthodox texts), this verse merely claims that scripture is “profitable” (ōphelimos; which could also be translated “useful,” “beneficial” or “valuable,” but certainly not “inerrant”) for teaching and moral correction. The goal of scripture, according to the following verse, is not that we would be provided with a perfectly accurate knowledge of science, history, or even theology, but that we would be “equipped for every good work.”

Though there are other texts which claim “God’s word” or “the law” is “perfect” or “unbreakable,” such can only be applied to the whole of what we now call scripture by inference (and of course it would be entirely circular to appeal to such texts to “prove” themselves. “The Bible claims it is inerrant, therefore it is inerrant” is not an argument; it’s a false tautology). Inerrancy, then, is a theological construct that is applied to the Bible, not a necessary conclusion from the Bible, and it too often obscures the fact that the Bible itself, upon inspection, is the product of a long process of writing and rewriting, debate and disagreement. The Bible is full of texts which take up previous biblical ideas and modify, extend, or call them into question. For instance, if you read Exodus through Deuteronomy as they now stand, you will find chapter after chapter of regulations concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices, all claimed to have been commanded by God shortly after Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Yet the prophet Jeremiah, writing several centuries later, attributes the following to God in 7:22, “in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (many modern translations, such as the NIV, add “just” after the highlighted terms, but there is no basis for this in the Hebrew).

Now there are only a handful of possible explanations for such a text (other than positing, without evidence, a scribal error): 1. Jeremiah was unaware of the Mosaic legislation, and so was mistaken about what God commanded at the Exodus; 2. What we now call “the Law of Moses” was not yet (fully) written by the time Jeremiah was speaking and/or; 3. Jeremiah knew of sacrificial regulations that were attributed to Moses, but disputed their divine origin or wanted to make a point (perhaps through hyperbole) that such regulations were not (as) vital as some believed.

In all probability, the truth lies in some combination of all three. Jeremiah almost certainly was not aware of all that we call the Law of Moses, because not all of it had yet been written (though some of it had). More basically, in criticizing the corruption and injustice he saw amongst those in his own day who claimed loyalty to the sacrificial regulations of the Jerusalem Temple, it is very likely that Jeremiah was questioning whether such cultic practices deserved the divine approval claimed for them. In short, not only does this text provide direct evidence of the developmental nature of scripture, but it is also an instance of explicit disagreement between biblical authors.

But here’s the key point: Jeremiah’s purpose does not appear to have been to reject the Law of Moses as false (remember, it didn’t even exist in the form we now have it). His point, as the rest of the chapter makes clear, was to convince his contemporaries that injustice and oppression of the poor are far more serious matters than adherence to the Jerusalem Temple. In order to shock his contemporaries out of their self-destructive complacency, Jeremiah here proves himself so passionately committed to justice and faithfulness to God that he is willing to call into question the Temple and the Mosaic law themselves to make that point. And he was right to do so. At that time, Israelite society was corrupt and heading towards disaster. Within a few years, Jeremiah’s prophecies would come true and Jerusalem would be wiped off the map by the Babylonians, her Temple destroyed, and her people exiled.

Jeremiah was right, but to make his point—indeed to remain faithful to God—he was willing to question scripture itself. This, I must insist, gives us a picture not of a static and “eternal” Bible which must be accepted without question, but a text whose very tensions and “contradictions” challenge our complacency and pseudo-piety, forcing us ever and anew to face the God it claims to reveal. To trust the Bible then, means not to maintain a slavish conformity to an eternally unchangeable set of Truths, but to carry forward its calls to faith and justice into our own situations, with renewed creativity and passion.

Nor is this an isolated example. From Genesis to Revelation, scripture is constantly alluding to or citing previous scriptures to make new points, correct old ones, or extend them into new situations. For instance, during the Babylonian Exile, someone composed a rather unflattering history of the Israelite monarchy, which we now know as 1 and 2 Kings. After the return from exile, another group rewrote that history in a more positive (and Priestly) light, and that work is known as 1 and 2 Chronicles. Both works, presenting alternative (and often conflicting) interpretations of the very same history of Israel, were included in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, with no official attempt at harmonization. Clearly those who wrote and collected the Bible did not share our modern obsession with consistency, or at least they considered it less important than the truth they found in these texts, tensions and all.

Such examples could be extended ad nauseam, all of which suggests that Christian scripture presents something far more like an engaging debate about the nature of God and God’s activity in history than a settled and permanent record of True Propositions. Therefore when someone points out to me that scripture describes some terrible things, I don’t feel any need to defend those things as “right” in our or even their own time. Perhaps the people who committed them believed they were following God’s will, perhaps God even commanded them for reasons that I can’t begin to comprehend, but nothing in the Bible demands that I accept that. Rather, the Bible presents me with an authentic portrait of humanity, and humanity has committed some truly awful deeds, many in the name of God.

To trust the Bible, then, does not mean believing it without question, but interacting with it, questioning it, reflecting its claims off of each other and our continuing experience, but, ultimately, letting it transform us. For despite what some seem to think, the horrific parts of the Bible, like the horrific parts of life, are not given the last word. The Bible places far more emphasis on laws which promote love and community; it highlights prophets who bravely condemned God’s own people when they clung to dead rituals and pious platitudes while ignoring justice and mercy; it tells the story of a God who loves the unlovable and constantly takes us back when we rebel; it even incorporates psalms and wisdom literature which question God’s own justice and faithfulness. But above all, it points to Jesus Christ, who calls us to self-sacrificing love as the only true and final answer to the evil we find in both the world and in the Bible, and who himself demonstrated the power and divinity of self-sacrifice through his death. To trust the Bible is to trust that God, not without question, but in the midst of our questions.

Prince Caspian Review

I have something of a strange relationship with books and film. I’ve been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, but I’m simultaneously a product of our visual culture. This means that whenever I read a good novel, I find myself wishing I could see it on screen, yet whenever I see a film based on a book I’ve read, I’m almost always disappointed at what it leaves out. The first PG-13 movie I ever saw was Jurassic Park; I was 11 but my dad took me to see it as a reward for just having finished reading the book (I did say I was an avid reader, right?). I hated it. All I could think about was how they had butchered the characters and left so much out. It wasn’t until I saw the movie again years later, when the book had become a distant memory, that I could really enjoy it as a movie, rather than see it as a poor representation of the book.

So when my wife and I had the opportunity to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian last night, I chose not to reread the book first. In fact, it’s been a few years since I’ve done so, and I’m glad of that, because it allowed me to enjoy the film on its own merits before worrying about how it compared to its source. By most measures, this second Narnia far surpasses the first. I’d even go so far as to say that it was nearly as entertaining, though not quite as grand, as any of the Lord of the Rings films. But as I’ve thought about it further, it’s hard to ignore all the changes it made to Lewis’ book. That being the case, if you're anything like me, you may want to see the movie itself before reading on, especially if you hate spoilers (I should also note that I have no idea how this movie got a PG rating. It is quite violent, including an improbable degree of bloodless death and even a decapitation; it should definitely have been rated PG-13).

Prince Caspian follows the four Pevensie children’s return to Narnia, called back when Prince Caspian (the rightful heir to the throne, but currently hiding from his murderous uncle Miraz) blows the magical horn that was given to Susan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As they attempt to win back Caspian’s throne and free Narnia from Miraz’ oppression, we are treated to a film which is at once better acted, more humorous, and much more exciting than its predecessor. This is because, while the first Narnia was careful to keep the themes and plot of C.S. Lewis’ book intact, this film almost completely abandons the attempt.

On the positive side, this meant the addition or modification of several scenes which, I thought, greatly enhanced the plot. For instance, I appreciated the way they modified the first act of the story: The intentionally ambiguous significance of the birth with which the film begins was clever and revealed the threat to Caspian’s life in a concise and interesting manner. Then, when they parallel the Pevensies trying to adjust to life as children again (a nice addition, in my opinion), with Caspian’s flight from Miraz, I found it a much more engaging introduction than the way Lewis described this sequence of events. More substantially, they add an entire battle in which the Narnians attempt to capture Miraz’s castle, which not only adds interest, excitement and some important emotional depth, but also makes better sense of the events which follow than the original book did. I also liked the expanded scene involving the White Witch, which I was shocked to see in the previews, but think worked very well.

If most of the additions are good, however, there are also a number of unfortunate omissions. Much has been made of the fact that Lewis’ book centered on the triumph of faith over skepticism, while the film totally obliterates this theme. The story takes place 1300 years after the events of the first film (though only one year later for the four children); the great castle they once ruled lies in ruins and Aslan seems long absent. The film almost completely leaves out the fact that few Narnians still believe in Aslan or the old stories. In the book, this is seen especially in the dwarf Trumpkin, who is a convinced skeptic who only slowly comes to recognize Aslan’s reality and authority. In the film, this arc is substantially diminished, as Trumpkin (who is played with a lot of humor) never really disbelieves that the old stories are true; he only doubts their present value.

But, personally, I’m not as troubled by this as others have been, as I think real faith has a lot more to do with trust than with belief anyway. Thus Trumpkin’s (and others, including Peter’s and Caspian’s) lack of trust in Aslan is actually a more realistic, and troubling, form of doubt than his simple disbelief in the book. If the movie gives less ground than Lewis’ original for letting us cheer the comeuppance of the disbelieving materialists, it provides a more nuanced exploration of the danger of lack of trust - in each other and in Aslan - among the “faithful.” To me, this seems of greater value in our postmodern context than the attack on modernism that Lewis intended.

A much less fortanate change was the diminished portrait of genuine faith. The strange thing is that this actually made for a worse movie, not only thematically, but also narratively. In the book, we have an extended sequence in which Lucy alone is able to see Aslan while the others only slowly and painfully come to trust that she knows what she’s doing in following his lead. Though this element is not completely omitted, it is passed over very quickly in the film, which then leaves out entirely the fact that Aslan also appeared to the rest of them - one by one, as they come to trust him - during the course of the story.

In place of this, we get a nice exchange between Susan and Peter where it is asked why Aslan hasn’t proven himself to them, and suggested that perhaps they are the ones who need to prove themselves to him. This does add emphasis to the need to trust even when Aslan seems absent (that is, when God seems absent, though the film subtly diminishes Aslan’s divinity). But in doing so it modifies Lewis’ point that faith precedes sight, and leaves a substantial plot hole which is never adequately filled. Despite what the review I quoted in my last post claimed, the fact that Aslan doesn’t really appear until the end (except in a dream to Lucy) does make him more like a dues ex machina than he should have been.

In the book, Aslan’s appearance in the last battle is but the culmination of a series of previous ones, so it not only brings closure to all conflict but also enables the realization that he had actually been with them all along. In the movie, however, his sudden arrival feels forced and out of place. Though Lucy facing an army with naught but a dagger and a lion is cute, the audience hasn’t been adequately prepared for the significance of this event. And if this is true of Aslan, it is even more so of the tree spirits and (especially) the water god which he brings with him to fight for the Narnians. To suddenly see a great river god attack Miraz’ army, when (unlike in the book) we’ve never even been given a hint that such a being exists, is as clear a case of dues ex machina as you’re likely to find. The result is an otherwise entertaining film which suddenly falls flat at its climax.

Holy Saturday - A Day For Death and Doubt

We know virtually nothing of Holy Saturday; only Matthew dates any events to the day between Jesus' death and resurrection: a late story of guards being set at the tomb. The other Gospels skip by without a word. Nowhere are we told what the disciples were doing. No miracles are reported, no visions of God, no resurrection appearances, nothing. God, it seems, was absent that day - like so many days since. It was a day worth forgetting, I suppose. Jesus was dead, well and truly, and hope had died with him. Our focus, rightfully, has fixed on the bright morning of Easter, but perhaps a little less haste is in order.

It is worth lingering with the doubt and uncertainty of that Saturday. Doubt can be healthful, scrubbing away our pious illusions and pseudo-knowledge, revealing the raw edges of life that we would prefer to leave hidden. We Christians tend to read the Gospels in hindsight; we already know the ending and don’t often bother with the mess in between. But it is good to see the mess, for our own lives are full of it. We too experience many a dark day when the death of God seems more real than his resurrection. Whatever we would prefer, death and doubt are as much a part of the Christian experience as life and hope, and even Easter does not fully erase this paradox.

The tensions and disagreements (nay, contradictions) between the Gospel accounts are too often dismissed or ignored, but today is a good day to remember them. We know Jesus was crucified on Friday, and that on Sunday his tomb was found empty, almost certainly by some of the women who had been following him. We know that in the coming weeks his disciples became convinced, in spite of themselves, that Jesus was alive again. But we know also of their initial doubts; their confusion has been canonized into the scattered reports of Jesus' appearances.

In a couple of posts at Exploring our Matrix, James McGrath explores these tensions, but they cay be summarized easily: Who first visited the tomb? Women, certainly, but which ones? The four Gospels disagree. And what did they see there? An angel, or was it a young man? Sitting on the rolled-back stone as in Matthew? Or in the tomb as in Mark? Or were there two as in Luke and John? What about the disciples? Did they run to the tomb themselves as John claims? Or was it only later – the Gospels disagree on where – that they first saw him? Ignoring these tensions would be dishonest, but also unhelpful. The truth is that whatever we believe about Easter, we are left with reconstructions, ambiguities, doubt. God, it seems, did not see fit to give us an unquestionable account; the Gospels have not been harmonized, and we can be grateful for that.

For doubt is not merely negative; it is purifying, both historically and personally. It reminds us of our finit perspectives, that the experience of God is always a little beyond us, broader than we can take in. It leaves us grasping, and that is a good thing. Garrison Keillor expresses this better than I can (HT: Shuck and Jive):

There is comfort for the doubter in the Passion story. You are not alone. Jesus’s cry from the cross was a cry of incredulity. The apostle [Peter] denied even knowing Jesus three times. The guy spent years with Jesus, saw the miracles up close, the raising of Lazarus, the demons cast out, the sick healed, the water-walking trick, all of the special effects, but when the cards were down, he said, “Who? Me? No way.”

He repented. I would too, but not quite yet.

Skepticism is a stimulant, not to be repressed. It is an antidote to smugness and the great glow of satisfaction one gains from being right. You know the self-righteous — I’ve been one myself — the little extra topspin they put on the truth, their ostentatious modesty, the pleasure they take in being beautifully modulated and cool and correct when others are falling apart. Jesus was rougher on those people than He was on the adulterers and prostitutes.

So I will sit in the doubter’s chair for a while and see what is to be learned back there.

On Holy Saturday, we could all spend some time in that chair.